“Did that hurt?” I asked, touching a fingertip to the fading mark.
He cupped my face in his hands and wiped at the corners of my mouth with his thumbs. “That wasn’t a pained moan.”
“Oh,” I said, my voice thick and stupid. “Oh.”
“You’re a rather messy eater,” he commented.
“You should see me around barbecue,” I said, yawning. “It gets ugly.”
“Well, I’m afraid I won’t have that pleasure,” he said, resting his chin on the top of my head. I raised my eyebrows, not quite catching the joke.
“Is feeding always like that?” I asked. “So…cozy?”
“No.” He stopped to pluck a pine needle out of my hair. “You set the tone. You needed to be soothed, so you were soothed. With a willing partner, feeding can be as violent, as sexual, as clinical and cold as the vampire wishes. And with a human, the sensations are much more intense. They’re more susceptible to our charms.”
Vampire. There was that word again. And suddenly, I was awkward. I couldn’t decide where to settle my weight. I wondered if I was crushing Gabriel’s arm. I wondered if I had vampire morning breath.
“Is Zeb going to be OK?” I asked, watching my friend snoring happily on my couch. “Before we, um…before, when you said that Zeb was my closest friend in the world. How did you know that?”
“Well, as I said earlier, before you ran out of my home like a crazy woman”—he shot me an arch look—“I told you, you have a very organized mind. If I want a piece of information, I can just pluck it out.”
I grimaced. “So, you read my mind?”
He grinned sheepishly. “No. You tend to ramble a bit when you’ve had too much to drink. You told me about Zeb at the restaurant.”
“That would be your version of humor, I assume?” I asked dryly.
Gabriel actually looked contrite for a second. It passed in favor of a brighter, intrigued expression. “You’re not all that experienced in the sexual arena.”
If this was a sitcom, I would have just spit water all over him.
“I told you that?” I gaped at him. I couldn’t think of a response rude enough, so I moved away under the pretense of checking on Zeb.
Gabriel relaxed against the wall, watching me prowl the room. “No. But I would be able to tell anyway. You smell different from most people. There’s an innocence about you, a freshness. It’s like the difference between cracking a good egg and a bad one.”
“So, I smell like a good, decent egg. Nice.” I stopped in my tracks. “Wait, is this a nice-ish way of telling me we had sex and I was lousy? That’s how you can tell I’m inexperienced? Because, if so, that’s just rude. And what were you doing at Shenanigans?
And how did you find me on the road?”
Gabriel looked wounded. “To answer your questions in order: The only body fluid I exchanged with you is blood—”
“That’s very comforting, thank you.”
“The bartender at Shenanigans is a vampire pet. He keeps pints of screened donated blood behind the bar. If you know to order the Tequila Sunrise special, he mixes palatable liquor with a healthy dose of blood.”
“What’s a vampire pet?” I asked, suddenly overwhelmed by a vision of humans on giant hamster wheels.
“A human who is marked and kept by a vampire as a companion and a willing source of blood,” he said. “They often serve as daytime protectors and help the vampire stay in contact with the modern world. It’s a beneficial relationship for both sides.
“And after you left the restaurant, I was concerned for you,” he said, reaching out to touch my hand. “I wanted to make sure you arrived home safely. Unfortunately, I didn’t follow you closely enough. I couldn’t stop that hunter from taking his shot.”
“But why did you turn me?”
He ran a thumb along my brow. “I just couldn’t stand the idea of a life like yours being snuffed out in such a tragic, ridiculous way. You deserved a better death.”
“Oh, well, thanks,” I said. “How do you thank someone for turning you into a vampire? A fruit basket? Blood Type of the Month Club?”
He chuckled. I smiled. I was relaxing, feeling some reconnection to the charming, mysterious guy I’d met at the bar. In my head, I heard glasses clinking. I could smell imitation Calvin Klein cologne and the jalapeño poppers being served to the couple next to us. Through the fog of memory, I saw Gabriel’s lips curve into a smile as I compared the relative merits of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash.
“Johnny Cash had all of the same talents and problems as Elvis—a poor upbringing in the rural South, exposure to gospel music throughout his childhood, a penchant for drug abuse,” I heard myself saying against the background of chatter and clinking glasses. “They had the same sort of influencing experiences, but Johnny Cash’s problematic relationship was with his father, not his mother. If he’d had the mommy issues that Elvis had instead of a compelling need to prove himself to his father, he wouldn’t have been the badass man in black, the guy in Folsom Prison watching the train roll by. Elvis was a lot of things, but even with the karate and the gunplay, he was more unstable than badass.”
“But you’re forgetting one thing,” Gabriel had said, motioning for the bartender to bring me another cup of coffee.
I’d sipped the coffee and added far too much cream and sugar. “What’s that?”
“Johnny Cash had June Carter.”
I had smiled. “Good point.”
“The love of a good woman can save a man,” I remembered Gabriel saying. “Or it can drive him to fits of unspeakable madness.”
I had stared at him a long moment before bursting out laughing. “Well, now I know how to inscribe my next Valentine’s Day card.”
Gabriel didn’t seem accustomed to a woman laughing at him. It had taken him a few seconds, but then he was laughing, too. Gabriel was a rare find. He was nothing like the men my age who lived in the Hollow. For one thing, he seemed to realize that wearing a baseball cap was not a substitute for combing one’s hair. He seemed to enjoy the contents of my brain, instead of looking at it as something that had to be canceled out by the contents of my bra. And I don’t think he’d even heard of NASCAR.
“How did we even get on this subject?” I’d asked, squinting at him.
“I honestly don’t know,” he had said, sipping his drink. “I asked you about your family’s church background, you went on a tangent about having to sit through the annual All-Gospel Sing and ‘Karen Newton’s atonal warbling.’ Gospel led to Elvis, Elvis led to Johnny Cash. I don’t think I’ve ever absorbed so much random trivia in one sitting.
I do enjoy watching your mind work, though. I can practically see all the little cogs and wheels clicking into place. Tell me more. My knowledge of contemporary music is somewhat limited.”
“Contemporary?” I’d laughed. “We’re talking about rockabilly music from the
1950s.”
Gabriel had raised his hands defensively. “Well, I haven’t bought an album in a while.”
Looking back, I really should have picked up on that as a clue that I was dealing with a vampire. But I’d been too pleased with ebb and flow of the conversation to pay attention, one subject leading to another and another in lazy concentric circles like smoke rings over our heads.
The memory was like reliving a pleasant dream, one that leaves you disappointed when you wake up and realize it wasn’t real. Only Gabriel was real, and it seemed I could pick this dream up again if I wanted. Now I touched Gabriel’s shoulder and tried to speak as carefully as possible. “Look, I’m really grateful that you saved my life. I know what would have happened if you hadn’t intervened. It’s just I’ve had so much to absorb. And I didn’t adjust to change gracefully while I was living.”
He was quiet again, studying me intently, looking for rhyme or reason in a brain where I was sure he’d find little of either. I looked away, brushing at the bloodstains at the corners of my mouth with a tissue.
“So, you’re inexperienced,” Gabriel said, more of a statement than a question.
“Yes, I thought we just covered this.”